EFY

This summer I got to go to an LDS youth camp called EFY for a week! It was Awesome! The week was full of getting to know other youth, going to amazing classes and having my testimony grow, playing games, going to dances, and much more. My favorite part was definitely going to the classes. All the teachers we had were amazing!
It was such a fantastic experience!

I went to EFY with a bunch of my guy Keeley cousins and we lucked out and all ended up in the same company!

The counselors for our company were all super fun!!!

This was our counselor group and some girls from my group that i became really good friends with.

Our session director was hilarious and his family was so cute!

New Kristi video

Per requests, here is another sample of Kristianne's musicial talent. Enjoy!

A man with many hats

Jimmy has had a sudden explosion of personality. I thought I'd just share a few moments with you.

Magician
(He came up with this trick all by himself)



Pirate
(The yellow thing on his shoulder is a stuffed chick)

Girls Camp

Girls Camp is definitely a highlight for our family, or at least most of our family. This year Dad, Julie, Amy, and I all left to go to camp and left Mom with the kids. Luckily, we all survived. I had to go up as a leader since I got kicked out of Young Womens a couple of weeks ago. It's really weird to be a leader and go to Relief Society... but I digress.
Camp was amazing! It's so beautiful up there. And you can feel the Spirit so strongly.

Just for the record, we slept in tents. This is just a broken old cabin that's on the hike.



We went up the weekend before camp to help set up and get ready for the girls to come up. We had church on Sunday, complete with Sacrament Meeting and everything. Amy gave a talk. All of us girls sang. Julie taught Relief Society/Priesthood/Young Womens/Primary. This picture is everybody during Julie's lesson.


Dad and Julie on a hike















Dad's most famous attire at camp- with his chainsaw













One special addition to camp this year was the slip-n-slide. However, Dad wasn't too happy about this since it wasn't an "approved" activity. But everyone involved agreed that it was a very unifying and uplifting experience. We even had spiritual analogies to go along with it.










I almost forgot to mention this. On the way down the mountain, miracles took place such that we ended up being able to help our stake young womens president and her husband when their truck broke down. Dad took her husband to town to get a tow truck and we waited on the side of the mountain. Our only provisions- these red vines and a couple granola bars. The interesting thing that I would like to note is that of the 165 cars that passed us while we were stranded, only two cars stopped to see if everything was alright. Next time I have to give a talk in church, I'm going to talk about charity and use this story! :)

Linda's Graduation

It's really weird to think that I've graduated. It still doesn't feel like it. It was really fun, though. I gave a Harry Potter speech that was, I thought, pretty awesome. It was all about the pensieve and then I reminisced about our high school days. Nobody could recognize me because I straightened my hair and didn't wear my glasses. But have no fear, I did wear glasses during my speech. Check them out!

I found out later that the administrator that was in charge of graduation frowned upon my glasses, saying that they were much too silly for such an occasion. She said that she wouldn't have let me wear them if she'd known I was going to do that. But that's exactly why I didn't tell her :)

Jimmy Update

Jimmy got his tonsils and adenoids out this past week. Let me tell you, we have been having fun, fun, fun. Between not being able to sleep through the night and having to wrestle to get him to take his medicine, we're definitely having the time of our lives. But we hope that if will benefit him a lot in the future. The doctor says that he should be able to sleep better at night because he'll be able to breathe better. We just hope that happens soon :)

Memorial Weekend

This was a pretty crazy weekend for our family. We had our annual family reunion, which was awesome. We love spending time with our extended family. Kristianne had an especially good time. She and her cousin Chris could often be found holding hands.
Also exciting was that Dave, Julie, Megan, Linda, and Amy went on a canyoneering trip with a family friend. They hiked through Birch Canyon and risked their lives careening over cliffs (well, really just rappelling but it sounds better that way). We had to wake up at 4 am to do this hike, so the sun wasn't even up when we started. We hiked for part of it and part of it was about eight rappels. I'm not sure how it works, but I'm going to try to upload all of our pictures onto an album in picassa so everybody can see our incredible pictures.
Alright, I think I figured out how to link a photo album in Picasa. If you want to see some more pictures from this trip just click this picture.

Birch Canyon